Peter Williams will be the first artist to exhibit at the new Karen Lear Gallery in Leiston. His solo exhibition will feature his highly detailed and atmospheric graphite pencil works, as well as a selection of paintings and prints. The exhibition runs from from Thursday 18th March until Thursday 25th March.
Peter has lived in Leiston for about 5 years with his partner Jenny, although he has had a connection with this area all of his life as his mother was born and brought up in Leiston.
Born in 1952 he has had a varied working life which included the regular British Army, college tutor, computer analyst and lorry driver, finally taking the life changing step of becoming a full time artist in 2002. He moved to Leiston in 2005 where he initially expected to make his living from local landscapes and coastal scenes but soon realized he would be better off finding a more niche area of the art market.
Having an immense interest in the great outdoors, animals, wildlife and particularly horses, he decided to concentrate on these subjects as well as exploit his passion for the old West and Native America.
Creating haunting Native American portraits and Western scenes, Peter says “I don’t try to be historically accurate but attempt to portray palpable and arresting emotions, suspending reality to present the viewer with the wild, unchecked passions and stoic serenity of Native America”.
He sells these works via the internet to collectors in North America and has been pleasantly surprised to also find many collectors here in the UK and Europe. His portraiture, wildlife and horse paintings, full of dramatic colour and movement have also proven to be very popular.
Although occasionally exhibiting at various venues throughout East Anglia, Peter has so far concentrated on building quite a successful on-line art business but now feels it’s time to be more proactive in the real world. This exhibition in Leiston will hopefully be the first of many!
The exhibition will run from Thursday 18th March until Thursday 25th March (including Sunday) at The Karen Lear Gallery, 23-25 Leiston High Street. Peter will be in attendance each day from about 9am until 4pm and hopes that people will drop in for a browse and a chat.
(Leiston is a small, fairly remote English market town about 2 miles inland from the Suffolk coast, about 20 miles from Ipswich to the South and 10 miles from Southwold in the North.)